Don't forget about DB queries when auditing model changes

I like using the laravel-auditing package when you need an audit trail of changes to your models.

Recently, I was reviewing an audit log for a particular model, and I was noticing some gaps in the logs that were recorded.

When I dug further into it, I found that there was a place where the DB builder was being used to update a record with the decrement operator. If you're wondering there is a valid reason for this, but it's outside the scope of this article. Because auditing is attached to the Eloquent model, this DB query was not being captured in the audit log.

This could also be caused when you do bulk updates with Eloquent, since that doesn't fire events per model instance.

Thankfully the package offers some custom auditing functionality which you can use to capture audit records after running the DB queries or your bulk Eloquent update.

You just need to make it a practice to remember to do this.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Sometimes a second set of eyes can be really helpful to figure out an annoying bug. The next time you're stuck, remember there's an option to Get Unstuck more quickly.